Commuters facing landslip train delays ‘until Easter’

Tom Burton

Commuters travelling by train between Leamington Spa and Banbury face up to eight more weeks of delays following a dramatic landslip.

Those travelling from King’s Sutton by train to Birmingham and beyond have been hit with lengthy delays to their journeys since 350,000 tonnes of material slipped dangerously close to the track.

Jeremy Wright MP visits the site of the Harbury Landslip NNL-151102-120259001

Services between the two stations have had to be cancelled and replaced with a ‘step-straight-on’ bus service following the incident near the Harbury Tunnel in Warwickshire on January 31.

Network Rail engineers are currently working to return the line back to a normal service as quickly as possible.

But it is now believed trains will not be running on the line until at least Easter time.

Graham Cross, director at Chiltern Railways, said: “We have introduced a longer-term timetable which has been in use since Monday and so far it has been running well.

“On the whole, we have had positive feedback about the fast ‘step-straight-on’ bus service and are doing our utmost, working closely with Network Rail, to reopen the line as soon as it is safe to do so.”

A Network Rail spokesman said the line will be closed for ‘several weeks’.